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Class UG \o 

Book ^^^j4^_ 

Copyright N°_ 

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2,V 






THE CAUSE AND EXTENT OF THE RECENT INDUS- 
TRIAL PROGRESS OF GERMANY. By Earl D. Howard. 



THE CAUSES OF THE PANIC OF 1893. 
Lauck. 



By William J. 



WHAT METHOD OF EDUCATION IS BEST SUITED FOR 
MEN ENTERING UPON TRADE AND COMMERCE. By 
Harlow Stafford Person, Ph.D. 

FEDERAL REGULATION OF RAILWAY RATES. ByAl- 
bert N. Merritt, Ph.D. {In preparation.) 

SHOULD SHIP SUBSIDIES BE OFFERED BY THE GOV- 
ERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. By Walter T. 
Dunmore. {,17!. preparation.) 

Each, crown 8vo, ^^i.oo net. Postage lo cents. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
Boston and New York 



^axt, ^c^affnetr & Qtlavx ^xx-^t 000^^0 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 



INDUSTKIAL EDUCATION 

A SYSTEM OF TRAINING FOR MEN 

ENTERING UPON TRADE 

AND COMMERCE 



BY 

HARLOW STAFFORD PERSON, Ph.D. 

Director and Assistant Professor of Commerce and Industry, 

The Amos Tuck School of Administration and 

Finance, Dartmouth College 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1907 



IliiRARY of CONGRESS I 
Two (JoDies Received ij 
JUN 21 190/ I 
Ooovneht Entry | 

<^ XXc, No, I 

COPY B. ■' i 






COPYRIGHT 1907 BY BART, SCHAFFNER t MARX 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published June jqofj 



PREFACE 

This series of books owes its existence to 
the generosity of Messrs. Hart, Schaffner & 
Marx of Chicago, who have shown a special 
interest in trying to draw the attention of 
American youth to the study of economic 
and commercial subjects, and to encourage 
the best thinking of the country to investigate 
the problems which vitally affect the business 
world of to-day. For this purpose they have 
delegated to the undersigned Committee the 
task of selecting topics, making all announce- 
ments and awarding prizes annually for those 
who wish to compete. 

In the year ending June 1, 1905, the fol- 
lowing topics were assigned: 

1. The cause and extent of the recent indus- 

trial progress of Germany. 

2. To what is the recent growth of American 

competition in the markets of Europe 
to be attributed? 

3. The influence of industrial combinations 

upon the condition of the American 
laborer. 



vi PREFACE 

4. The economic advantages and disadvant- 

ages of present colonial possessions to 
the mother country. 

5. The causes of the panic of 1893. 

6. What forms of education should be ad- 

vised for the elevation of wage-earners 
from a lower to a higher industrial 
status in the United States ? 

7. What method of education is best suited 

for men entering upon trade and com- 
merce ? 
The present volume was awarded the first 
prize. 

Professor J. Laurence Laughlin, 

University of Chicago, Chairman. 
Professor J. B. Clark, 

Columbia University. 
Professor Henry C. Adams, 

University of Michigan. 
Horace White, Esq., 

New York City. 
Hon. Carroll D. Wright, 

Clark College. 



CONTENTS 

PART I 

THE NEED OF A SYSTEM OF INDUSTRIAL 
EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 

I. A German View of the Strength of the United States in 

International Competition 3 

II. Germany — Inferior Physical Resources compensated for 

by an Efficient System of Industrial Education ... 6 
m. The United States — Efficiency of Superior Physical Re- 
sources impaired by Absence of Industrial Education 10 
IV. The Value of Industrial Education to Employer and to 

Employee , 16 

V. The Value of Industrial Education to Society and to the 

State 22 

VI. Efficiency of Industrial Education indicated by Experi- 
ence 27 

PART II 

AN OUTLINE OF A SYSTEM OF INDUSTRIAL 
EDUCATION FOR THE UNITED STATES 

VII. Fundamental Considerations — A System of Industrial 
Education must be adapted to the Existing Educa- 
tional System and to the Nature of the Services for 

which it is intended to train 39 

Vlll. Classification of Industrial Services 43 

IX. Classification of Existing Educational Institutions — 

General and Industrial 48 

X. The Extension of the System of Specialized Industrial 

Schools 54 

XI. The Extension of the System of Specialized Industrial 

Schools (continued) 60 

XII. The Curricula of the Schools of the Extended System . . 68 

Xin. Managerial Ability and Training 75 

ISBEK 83 



NOTE 

iVhen this essay was written the author did 
not contemplate the possibility of its ultimate 
publication; the subject is not so fully devel- 
oped, therefore, as it would have been had 
that outcome been in mind. Treating in brief 
compass numerous aspects of a very com- 
prehensive subject, it is no more than a series 
of suggestions. It is the hope of the author 
that there may result criticisms which will 
furnish him material and guidance in the 
preparation of a more exhaustive work on the 
same subject. 

H. S. P. 



PART I 

THE NEED OF A SYSTEM OF INDUSTRIAL 
EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES 



A German View of the Strength of the United 
States in International Competition 

Shortly after the close of the St. Louis Ex- 
position there began to appear in the news- 
papers of Germany accounts of the experi- 
ences, related before clubs and societies, of 
those who had visited the exposition.^ These 
reports were more than the mere description 
of a world's fair. They constituted collectively 
an expression of expert opinion on the re- 
sources and industries of the United States, on 
the strength of the United States as a com- 
petitor in the world's trade, and especially as 
a competitor of the German Empire. As com- 
missioners, exhibitors, manufacturers, and 
merchants, these travelers had not seized the 
opportunity to visit the United States merely 
for a summer's outing; they came as an un- 
organized intelligence bureau of the German 
people, seeking for information as to the real 
intent and power of this industrial rival. Their 
addresses, formal and informal, were their re- 
port to industrial Germany. 

They confirmed previous accounts of the 

^ Monthly Consular Reports of the United States, Jan. 1905, p. 229. 



4 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

vast natural resources of the United States, of 
the tremendous energy of its people, of the 
efficiency of its industrial organization, and 
of the extraordinary progress of the past two 
decades: they confirmed the impression that 
nature, in the wealth of physical resources she 
had bestowed upon a vigorous people, had cre- 
ated here a power to be reckoned with in the 
international competition of the future. But 
they assured their hearers, also, that any spe- 
cial anxiety on account of this competitor was 
quite unwarranted in spite of the many nat- 
ural advantages which they enumerated. As 
offsetting the advantages, they pointed out 
certain disadvantages, obvious to themselves, 
of which, however, the people of the United 
States as a whole were apparently unconscious. 
Of these disadvantages, especially significant 
was that common American temperament 
which they described as a state of careless 
confidence, a "feeling of complacent satisfac- 
tion with everything American"; a feeling 
that in industry and in commerce, as in other 
manifestations of national life, there is no 
need of conscious, concerted action looking 
towards improvement and greater efficiency. 
As one expression of this careless confidence, 
they cited the absence of special industrial 
education and the "reliance on a general and 
more or less superficial education, together 



A GERMAN VIEW 5 

with natural adaptation." These educators, 
scientists, merchants, manufacturers, and en- 
gineers, constituting a body capable of pass- 
ing judgment on all phases of industrial activ- 
ity, advised their hearers to set their minds at 
rest, because of the neutralizing influence of 
this careless overconfidence in the advantages 
due to natural resources and geographical situ- 
ation. 

Americans should not allow these observa- 
tions to pass without some serious considera- 
tion. Exaggerated though they may be, they 
should at least induce searching self-examina- 
tion. Especially should they arouse us to a 
consideration of the specific charges, compla- 
cent satisfaction and an inefficient industrial 
education. It is the purpose of this essay to 
consider in detail the latter of these charges, 
with especial reference to the necessity of 
developing an adequate system of industrial 
education in the United States. 



II 

Germany — Inferior Physical Resources com- 
pensated for by an Efficient System of Indus- 
trial Education 

Inasmuch as this study has been suggested 
by criticisms on the part of German observers 
of industrial conditions in the United States, 
it seems desirable in the first place to review 
briefly the experience which has given rise to 
the German critic's attitude of mind. 

Present political Germany came into exist- 
ence less than four decades ago, and although 
the establishment of the Empire marks the 
initiation of the present industrial policy, 
industrial Germany as we know it has de- 
veloped mainly within the last two decades. 
Yet to-day Germany is one of the strongest 
competitors for international trade in the 
world's markets, surpassing the United States 
in spite of our incomparable resources, sur- 
passing France in spite of that country's 
longer period of development, and having 
become a source of alarm to Great Britain in 
spite of the latter's better developed resources 
and the advantage of two centuries of com- 
mercial supremacy. Germany has achieved 
so much in so brief a time, be it noted, not 



GERMANY 7 

because of any extraordinary resources, nor 
merely because of her rapidly increasing 
population. Except in restricted areas, her 
climate is severe and her soils are poor. For 
the greater part of her raw material she is de- 
pendent on other countries. Meagre indeed are 
her resources as compared with those of the 
United States. Quite other factors than these 
have made possible her development into so 
formidable an industrial state, — factors that 
are social rather than physical. Two are wor- 
thy of special mention. One of these is a quality 
acquired through centuries of intensive labor, 
— the capacity for taking pains. The struggle 
for existence caused by meagre resources has 
developed, in place of careless confidence, a 
consciousness of the necessity of thorough 
labor wherever and however applied. The 
second factor that has been at the basis of the 
development of present industrial Germany 
is the paternalistic state. The paternalism of 
the German Empire, applied to the creation 
of industrial efficiency, has secured wonderful 
results from the limited resources given by 
nature to the German people. 

Well established politically, Germany be- 
gan to apply her centralized power to the 
development of industry. This expressed 
itself in many ways; in protective tariffs, 
bounties and subsidies, but in no way with 



8 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

more energy than in industrial education, 
which was pursued with the inherited char- 
acteristic of thoroughness to which we have 
called attention.* Students of industry be- 
came the advisers of the Government; the 
scientists in the laboratories of the universities 
gave their services to agriculture and manu- 
facturing; geographers and travelers studied 
with minuteness the physical characteristics 
of foreign countries ; trade-schools were estab- 
lished for the development of skilled factory 
labor, and schools of commerce for the train- 
ing of salesmen. Every resource of a paternal- 
istic government was brought to bear to cre- 
ate efficiency, — efficiency in producing and 
efficiency in selling. 

The result has been the rise within a quar- 
ter of a century of that new Germany which 
has taken its place as one of the great states 
competing in the markets of the world. The 
creation of this powerful industrial state has 
been due, be it noted again, not to superior 
natural resources, but to deliberate effort in 
the face of relatively inferior resources, t 

It is with the consciousness of what has been 
achieved by industrial education in the devel- 
opment of Germany that the visitors to the 

* For a general comparison of Germany, England, and the United 
States, as to technical education, see Shadwell, Industrial Efficiency, 
vol. ii, ch. xvii. 



GERMANY 9 

United States, after their observations, ad- 
vise their countrymen that there is no reason 
why they should not compete to-day on equal 
terms with the United States. The question 
arises, — did they observe correctly? 



Ill 

The United States — Efficiency of Superior 
Physical Resources impaired by Absence of 
Industrial Education 

-tlAD these German critics wished to give an 
analysis of the advantages possessed by the 
United States, they could have done no better 
than to adapt, as a distinguished French eco- 
nomist has in fact done, the analysis presented 
by our own Federal Census of 1900.^ The in- 
dustrial strength of the United States is to be 
attributed to five primary causes: 

1. Agricultural and similar resources; in 
the production of wheat, corn, cotton, animal 
products, and forest products, the United 
States stands first. 

2. Mineral resources; in the production of 
coal, iron ore and copper, basic materials 
of industry, the United States stands first, 
and in the production of the precious metals 
ranks with the leading countries. 

3. The development and perfection of 
her transportation system, the United States 
possessing more miles of railroad than all the 
countries of Europe combined, and maintain- 

^ Twelfth Census of the United States, vol. 7, p. Ivi, and Leroy- 
Beaulieu, The United States in the Twentieth Century, pp. xxii and 167. 



THE UNITED STATES 11 

ing lower rates than obtain in any other 
country. 

4. Freedom of trade between all the states 
and territories, which combines into one com- 
mercial area regions as diversified climatically 
as Italy and Scandinavia, thus forming the 
greatest home market in the world. 

5. A doubly selected population ^ possess- 
ing a freedom from inherited and over-con- 
servative ideas ; energetic, active, adventurous, 
but not undisciplined. 

For a similar analysis of the disadvantages 
suggested, they might have offered the follow- 
ing: 

1. The very prodigality of nature in this 
virgin region has made the acquisition of 
wealth so easy that there has developed, on 
the part of the American people, a liking only 
for the accomplishment of big things at what- 
ever cost, — a wasteful disposition. Such a 
wealth of resources has been offered to the 
relatively sparse population of this extensive 
region, that nature has in effect borne the cost 
of this waste — as in the exploitation of forest 
resources — and this has developed a careless 
confidence. But now that the surplus of 
natural wealth has been generally appropri- 
ated, success must come to the individual, not 

^ Leroy-Beaulieu, The United States in the Twentieth Century, 
p. xviii. 



12 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

as a matter of the mere further appropriation 
of nature's wealth, but by the creation of 
wealth by effort. Under these new conditions, 
a careless, wasteful disposition handicaps the 
American in his competition with more thrifty 
peoples. 

2. The freedom from inherited and over- 
conservative ideas and the individualistic 
habit of thought of the settlers, accentuated 
by a physical environment which has pro- 
moted the success of individual, as opposed 
to concerted effort, has tended to cause self- 
reliance to degenerate into a state of mind 
approaching conceit, into a careless confidence 
in the success of all things American. 

3. The physical wealth of the country has 
been so reflected in a high standard of living 
on the part of all classes, in large profits and 
high wages, that success in competition by 
the cutting of the wage-cost on the one hand 
or by accepting decreased profits on the other 
hand, can be accomplished only with great 
confusion. 

4. The vast supplies of cheap power and 
cheap raw material have been already ap- 
propriated by a limited number of industrial 
explorers, and their future value already cap- 
italized in ''prospective earnings" and distrib- 
uted by "business enterprise"^ to the public. 

^ Thorstein Veblen, Theory of Business Enterprise, ch. vi. 



THE UNITED STATES 13 

To the great mass of enterprisers in the United 
States, therefore, their properties do not re- 
present nature's bounty, but capital invested. 
Nature's bounty has been gathered in in 
advance, by comparatively few. For the great 
number of enterprisers, to conserve invested 
capital means to resist any considerable de- 
crease in profits based on values partly artificial. 
The necessity of maintaining fictitious values 
is a handicap in international competition. 

5. Notwithstanding their great system of 
public education, the American people do not 
yet possess, and do not seem to appreciate the 
value of, the most efficient human instrument 
for increasing competitive efficiency under 
given conditions of natural resources, — a sys- 
tem of technical education. This the Germans 
do possess, and it gives them an advantage in 
competition with the Americans. 

In short, the German observers console 
themselves by recognition of the plain fact 
that now, except for a few world monopolies 
such as the mineral oil industry, the profit on 
invested capital for the individual producer in 
the United States is narrow; that the German 
or any other people, in spite of inferior natural 
resources, by careful, economical methods, by 
the development of the greatest skill not only 
in the fashioning of goods, but in the art of 
exploiting markets, may compete on equal 



14 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

terms with a people possessing superior re- 
sources, but self-confident, complacent, and 
disdainful of effort. 

What Germany relies upon under these 
circumstances is the advantage of a highly 
developed system of technical education. She 
trains her chemists to the highest degree of 
efficiency, and, without any advantage in raw 
materials, takes the lead as a producer of 
chemicals and as a consumer of chemical pro- 
ducts in the scientific development of indus- 
trial processes, — witness the Badische Analin 
und Soda Fabrik, the greatest of aniline dye 
manufacturers, and the Krupp Works at 
Essen, unexcelled in the manufacture of steel 
products. She trains her labor for the textile 
industry in trade-schools, and rivals England 
and France in the manufacture of a grade 
of textiles which the United States cannot 
approach, — from raw cotton furnished by 
the United States. She trains her bank clerks 
in technical schools, and banking institutions 
in the United States send for them to take 
positions at the head of foreign exchange de- 
partments. She trains her salesmen in these 
technical schools and they set out with a know- 
ledge of the languages, customs, tastes, and 
peculiarities of their markets.^ Competing 

* For example, Monthly Consular Reports of the United States, 
no. 285, p. 786; no. 287, p. 160; no. 292, pp. 214, 298. 



THE UNITED STATES 15 

American salesmen have to come to them for 
assistance. It is only in the production of cer- 
tain standardized, machine-made products, 
such as steel structures, that the American has 
any advantage.* In production of the great 
variety of articles for which there is growing 
demand in markets now being developed, the 
United States is at a disadvantage, and in 
the technique of salesmanship is decidedly 
inferior. 

Certainly it is not the part of wisdom for the 
United States to permit any advantage she 
may have in the possession of raw materials 
to be neutralized in her competition in the 
world's markets by the superior skill of her 
rivals in manufacturing and in selling. Let the 
people of the United States contemplate all 
her immense natural resources without fall- 
ing into that dangerous state of complacent 
satisfaction noted by our German critics, but 
with a realization of the need of painstaking 
effort in training those about to enter indus- 
try to a point of superiority in industrial 
technique. 

* Levy, Die Stahlindustrie der Vereinigten Staaten, pp. 310-315. 



IV 

The Value of Industrial Education to 
Employer and to Employee 

The reference which has been made to the 
confidence of the Germans in their system 
of industrial education as an offset to the ad- 
vantages in resources possessed by the United 
States, has been intended to awaken readers 
interested in the success of the United States 
in world trade to a realization of the necessity 
for the development in the United States of an 
equally efficient educational system. It is now 
desirable to consider, on other grounds than 
that of securing increased efficiency in inter- 
national competition, what may be the neces- 
sity for such a system of industrial education. 

Interest in this question should be the same 
for the man already established in business 
and for the young man about to enter his em- 
ploy. The former seeks the most efficient labor, 
whether in the shop, in the office, or on the 
road, whether mechanical labor or the labor 
of management, and is willing to pay each 
employee according to the value of his serv- 
ices. The young man looking forward to a 
business career must, in the majority of cases, 
begin as a laborer of one sort or another, and 



EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYEE 17 

is willing to offer the most eiBcient service of 
which he is capable for a remuneration pro- 
portioned to the value of that service. The 
self-interests of both employer and employee 
demand of the latter the same thing, — effi- 
cient service. 

The conditions of efficient service are very 
different to-day from those of similar service 
a half or quarter century ago. Industrial 
changes have been so great that the problems 
confronting the young man entering business 
to-day require abilities of a different order. 
The characteristic feature of the industrial 
problem of the earlier generation was the de- 
mand for force — force in seizing the advan- 
tages offered by nature and in overcoming the 
obstacles to their attainment. The character- 
istic feature of industry to-day is the demand 
for ability to comprehend complex relations, 
to correlate without friction and without 
waste the factors of industry, to make of any 
industrial organization a smoothly-working 
machine.^ Then it was the building of a rail- 
road across the mountains, or the locating 
and exploiting of a tract of timber or a mine, 
regardless of waste, for nature was generous; 
to-day it is the development of organization, 
and the bringing into an harmonious whole the 
hundred and one different factors that enter 

^ F. A. Vanderlip, Scribner's Magazine, March, 1905, p. 339. 



18 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

into an industrial institution. Then industry 
demanded in the young man, at as early an 
age as possible, energy and power, qualities 
developed by "experience"; to-day industry 
demands of the young man, in addition to and 
preliminary to experience, knowledge ; know- 
ledge obtained from the conscious, scientific 
study of principles derived from business ex- 
perience. 

Half a century ago, before the great devel- 
opment of means of communication, in the 
numerous relatively isolated and only partly 
settled sections of the country, the individual 
manufacturer or merchant in his small plant 
bought and made and sold for a local market. 
He was generally a pioneer in his market, 
with all the advantages which this situation 
implied. His profits were usually large, with 
a generous margin for error. The details of 
his business were relatively simple, whether 
in buying, in making, or in selling. For the 
average man, "experience" was a practicable 
and a satisfactory preparation. He did not 
enter a business already highly complex, as 
does the young man of to-day, and as his 
business became more complex, he grew in 
knowledge 'pari passu. He was in a position 
to acquire in an empirical way a thorough 
knowledge of the technique of his business, 
and of the social and other conditions of his 



EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYEE 19 

limited market. To-day, on the other hand, 
'* experience," especially in the many highly 
developed lines of business, is not a sufl&- 
cient teacher for the man of average calibre 
who aspires to a comprehensive knowledge 
of business. It is certainly invaluable, not to 
be dispensed with, but its teaching is far from 
sufficient. To rely on it alone would be, for 
the majority of young men, as foolish as for 
the student of medicine to rely upon hospital 
experience alone, or for the student of law 
upon desultory reading in an office. 

Markets, when not world-wide, are contin- 
ent-wide, and a business is either directly, or 
indirectly through its dependence on numer- 
ous other businesses, sensitive to an incalcul- 
able number of climatic, social, political, and 
legal influences. This sensitiveness is in- 
creased with the widening of markets, with 
keener competition, and with the narrower 
margin of profits. There is no longer the 
former margin for error; "profits tend every- 
where to a minimum, so that in the end the 
percentage of earnings on sales declines to- 
wards the level of existence," and a business 
must turn over its capital six, eight, or more 
times, in order to earn a living return.^ So 
narrow is the margin of profits in many busi- 
nesses that it has come to be recognized each 

^ Thomas L. Greene, Corporation Finance, pp. 1 and 2. 



20 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

new year that increasing competition is likely 
to wipe out the profits secured under the 
conditions of the preceding year, and that 
those profits must be replaced by others result- 
ing from superior management. A Marshal 
Oyama must know no more about the stra- 
tegic points of his game and the thousand and 
one characteristics of his opponents and the 
field of action than must the business man, 
and the commander who waits for the acqui- 
sition of such information until the time of 
battle, wins no Lia6yang. 

Not only has the young man entering busi- 
ness to-day more complex relations to under- 
stand than he would have had a quarter of 
a century ago, but he is placed in a less ad- 
vantageous position for understanding them. 
Then division of labor did not confine him so 
narrowly; he was called upon from the first to 
enter into a greater variety of activities. Ex- 
perience then was really experience; experi- 
ence to-day is for the apprentice the doing 
of routine work. Routine work does not give 
broadness of view or develop broadness of 
mind. On the contrary, unless the apprentice 
comprehends the relations of his services to 
the whole, his routine work but narrows him 
and makes him an automaton. The average 
young man of to-day without a trained mind 
equipped with a previously acquired founda- 



EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYEE 21 

tion of facts, is not, in the narrow place to 
which division of labor assigns him, in a posi- 
tion to grasp the breadth and depth of his 
business. This was not so true of the young 
man of half a century ago, whose particular 
place was less narrowly defined and whose 
business had not developed its present-day 
breadth and depth. 

A more careful consideration of these facts 
should make clear to the business man and 
to the young man looking forward to a busi- 
ness career, that under present industrial 
conditions an efficient system of industrial 
education would solve important problems for 
both. It should also make clear that under 
industrial conditions that are fast approaching, 
such a system of education will be a necessity. 



The Value of Industrial Education to Society 
and to the State 

Keference has been made to the import- 
ance of industrial education to that group of 
enterprisers interested in achieving success 
for the United States in the neutral markets 
of the world; its importance to business men 
who in one voice complain, "I do not know 
where to turn to find a young man properly 
trained to come into my ofl&ce who, by an 
appreciation of the problems which I have to 
face, can relieve me of a portion of responsi- 
bility" ; ^ and of its importance to those young 
men looking forward to the opportunity to 
silence such a complaint. But has it not an 
importance to society, because of society's 
relation to business activity? 

A large number of the most serious pro- 
blems perplexing society to-day arise out of the 
industrial situation. Municipalities are strug- 
gling with the problem of franchises, and the 
granting of a franchise is chiefly a business 
transaction between the people and an indi- 
vidual. States are struggling with the problem 
of corporate taxation, and the taxation of 

^ Davis R. Dewey, Technology Review, April, 1901. 



VALUE TO SOCIETY AND STATE 23 

corporations involves the adjustment of the 
rights of the people to the rights of a complex 
and delicate business organization. Both the 
states and the national government are con- 
cerned with diflScult problems relating to the 
conservation of economic resources, such as 
the forestry and irrigation problems. The 
people as a whole are concerned on the one 
hand with retaining the economic benefits of 
large corporate organizations, and on the 
other hand with guarding against unjust and 
possibly immoral exploitation on the part of 
these organizations. It has been said that 
formal law has not developed as rapidly as has 
industrial activity, that out of the inapplicabil- 
ity of formulated legal principles to specific 
industrial activities, the possibility of unjust 
and immoral business enterprise has been 
taken advantage of, and that the great pro- 
blem of the present is a readjustment of these 
two factors, — law and economic conditions.^ 

Such being the problems of our democratic 
society, the need for a clearer practical know- 
ledge on the part of the public of the nature 
of industry to-day, is obvious. It is obvious 
also that there is need not only for a better 
general knowledge of such conditions, but for 
a larger body of unprejudiced and incorrupt- 
ible experts capable of advising as to the influ- 

^ Henry C. Adams, Economics and Jurispnidence, passim. 



24 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

ence of specific legislation on industrial activ- 
ity. It has been often charged that the ablest 
young men entering industry are absorbed at 
once into the large corporate organizations; 
whether or not this be an exaggerated state- 
ment, it has been admitted by many whose 
opportunities for securing information are 
numerous, that concentrated wealth, seeking 
for investment, is unable to find men enough 
with the ability to apply these large sums to 
industrial purposes.^ If such be the situation, 
it is not unreasonable to assert that the large 
corporations do attract the ablest men, and 
the salaries paid by such institutions are a 
. strong evidence that the assertion is not only 
not unreasonable but correct. It is not likely 
that the unprejudiced judgment of the ablest 
men will be given to society, in the solution 
V of questions of public policy, when the ablest 
men are in the service of the large corporations, 
and when the questions involve the adjust- 
ment of the rights of society as a whole to the 
rights of these corporations. 

There is another practical relation between 
society as a whole and individuals engaged 
in industrial enterprise. With the increasing 
wealth of the people there has been an increas- 
ing fund for investment and an increasing 
number of small investors. These investors 

^ James B. Dill, Pub. Mich. Pol. Sd. Ass'n, June, 1903, p. 125. 



VALUE TO SOCIETY AND STATE 25 

have become the owners of the industrial 
property, while the management of the pro- 
perty of which they have become owners 
has passed almost from their control.^ They 
are no longer in a position to judge by direct 
investigation of the management of the pro- 
perties which represent their wealth. They 
are more and more dependent upon intelli- 
gent, unprejudiced advice as to the value of 
the institutions in which their wealth is ven- 
tured, in these their private relations, just as 
they are dependent on such advice in the 
public relations to which we have referred. 

The situation seems to be, therefore, one in 
which there is an increasing need for the indi- 
vidual, as citizen and as investor, to pass 
judgment upon industrial problems ; in which 
the industry giving rise to these problems 
is becoming more complex and difficult of 
comprehension; and in which the individual 
is more and more in need of able advice 
by a class of industrial specialists, numerous 
enough to make their average judgments safe, 
and independent enough to make them un- 
prejudiced. Unfortunately, these industrial 
specialists are neither numerous nor inde- 
pendent. 

Would a system of industrial education re- 
lieve what has been aptly termed **a scarcity 

* Veblen, Theory 0} Business Enterprise, pp. 158, 159, and passim. 



26 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

of business talent"?* Geniuses, it must be 
admitted, are born, not made; no system of 
education can create them. But an efficient 
i system of industrial education can accom- 
j plish three things; it can raise the general 
1 average of intelligence; it can develop spe- 
cialized talent; and it can offer the opportun- 
ity for genius to find itself. Acting as an in- 
strument of selection, by presenting industrial 
facts in a way to make young men responsive, 
it can turn to industrial ends abilities of all 
grades, the abilities of average men, of talented 
men, and of geniuses, abilities that might 
otherwise waste themselves in activities to 
which they are less adapted. 

KA «j^:|C ^ Henry C. Adams, Pvb. Am. Economic Ass'n, vol. 5, no. 2, p. 104. 



VI 

Efficiency of Industrial Education indicated 
by Experience 

This question of the value of industrial 
education requires more than deductive rea- 
soning from the value of education in general. 
Has actual experience with such specialized 
education furnished the evidence that it can 
accomplish the results suggested in the pre- 
ceding pages ? Can it increase the technical 
efficiency of young men entering upon busi- 
ness careers, to the advantage of both the 
young man and his employer, and to the ad- 
vantage of the United States in international 
competition ? Can it raise the general intelli- 
gence as to industrial affairs, and develop a 
body of unprejudiced experts on industrial 
questions ? 

The experience of two peoples who have 
achieved remarkable development within re- 
cent years seems to answer this question in 
the affirmative. Reference has been made to 
the development of the German people. They 
themselves attribute the accomplishment of 
all these results to their system of industrial 
education,^ and the more carefully those of us 

* Monthly Consular Reports of the United States, no. 288, p. 132. 



28 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

standing outside study the situation, the more 
convinced we are that the German's explana- 
tion is a true one. The same may be said of 
the Japanese. Their development has been 
not less remarkable, and it is to be attributed 
not less to technical education. For some 
years the Japanese have been sending young 
men abroad to secure training in the military, 
naval, and industrial arts. We have just wit- 
nessed the remarkable results of such training 
for war; the results of the similar training for 
industry are not forced by circumstances into 
so high a light, but they are not less significant. 

The United States is not entirely without 
experience of her own. She has no general 
system of industrial education, like that of 
Western Europe. But she has had for some 
years institutions for technical training for 
certain careers, trade and engineering schools, 
and, for a few years past, schools of higher 
commercial education. Do these institutions 
show results that may throw light upon the 
value of industrial education ? 

So far as we are aware, no general study has 
been made of the data furnished by these 
industrial schools. Three or four isolated in- 
vestigations have been made, however, with 
interesting results. In 1903 Mr. James M. 
Dodge, president of the Link Belt Engineer- 
ing Company, and at that time president of 



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5 18 20 22 24 26 Z8 SO 1 



Mr. Dodge 
Mr. Hap6ood 



Worcester Polytec. 
Tuck School 

CHART L 



tY&i^/t/rs 



30 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

the American Society of Mechanical Engin- 
eers, published in "St. Nicholas," ^ and after- 
wards repeated in a paper before the society of 
which he was president,^ the results of such a 
study. He estimated the relative money value 
of technical training to mechanical labor, by 
comparing the weekly wages and the relative 
increase in weekly wages, of unskilled, shop- 
trained, trade-school trained, and technolog- 
ical-school trained employees. With respect 
to the method of securing the data, in a letter 
to the writer, he says : 

. . . the data of my address on the " Money Value of 
Training" were obtained by investigating the records 
of the Link Belt Engineering Co. and of the Dodge 
Coal Storage Co. — the records covering a period of 
about fourteen years. I then had the figures compared 
with such records as I could obtain from my friends in 
somewhat similar lines of business, and for fear of being 
in error, made a reduction of about 10 % from what the 
actual statistics show. 

The curves accompanying Mr. Dodge's 
article are reproduced in Chart I. Condensing 
his results, we find the following argument 
in favor of technical training for mechanical 
labor: 

AVERAGE OF UNSKILLED GROUP 

This group receives $10 per week at twenty- 
two years of age, and does not advance much 
farther. 

* November, 1903, * Trans, of Am. Soc. of Mech. Eng'rs. xxv. 



EFFICIENCY INDICATED 31 

AVERAGE OF SHOP-TRAINED GROUP 

The average of this group enters the shop at 
sixteen years of age at $3 per week ; advances 
steadily to $9 at twenty; to $13.20 at twenty- 
two years, six months; to $15.80 at twenty- 
four, beyond which wage the average does not 
advance. 

AVERAGE OF TRADE-SCHOOL GROUP 

The average man of this group enters the 
shop at nineteen years of age at $12 per week; 
advances to $15 at twenty years, six months; 
to $16 at twenty-one years, six months; and 
to $22 at twenty-five years. The data are lack- 
ing as to further progress, but according to 
Mr. Dodge, "the presumption is that this 
line would bear off more towards the hori- 
zontal, eventually paralleling the line of the 
shop-trained man, but much higher on the 
chart." 

AVERAGE OF TECHNOLOGICAL-SCHOOL GROUP 

(Massachvsetts Institute oj Technology, Columbia, Cornell, etc.) 

The average man enters the shop at twenty- 
two years of age at $13 per week; advances 
steadily to $32 at twenty-seven years ; then at 
a less rapid rate to $42 at thirty- two years. 

Mr. Dodge's result, although criticised as 
being more favorable to the technological 



32 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

graduate than is justified in the average case, 
is substantiated by a study of the careers of 
the graduates of the Worcester Polytechnic 
Institute in Electrical Engineering.^ As the 
Departnient of electrical engineering had 
been established but eight years, data were 
available for that period only, but the author- 
ities of the institution believed the data had 
been received from a large enough body of 
graduates to represent conditions fairly. The 
following results were obtained (Chart I) : 

AVERAGE OF GROUP WITHOUT GRADUATE 
STUDY 

The average graduate enters business at a 
weekly wage of approximately $10 at the age 
of twenty-two years, nine months; advances 
at an even rate to about $21 at twenty-five, 
and $38 at thirty. 

AVERAGE OF GROUP WITH GRADUATE STUDY 

The average man with graduate training 
enters business at a weekly wage of approx- 
imately $10 at the age of twenty- three years, 
nine months; and advancing at even rate, 
passes the student without graduate training 
before he is twenty-six, and receives $33 at 
twenty-eight, and $50 at thirty-one. 

* Undated pamphlet published by the Worcester Polytechnic 
Institute. 



EFFICIENCY INDICATED 33 

In "System" of December, 1904, appeared 
an article presenting the results of a similar 
investigation, by Mr. Herbert J. Hapgood, 
founder and president of Hapgood 's. This 
study was suggested to Mr. Hapgood by Mr. 
Dodge's article, but the investigation was 
along entirely different lines. Interested in 
the value of college and university training for 
business, Mr. Hapgood divided the laborers 
represented into two classes, college and non- 
college men. In the article referred to he says : 

It is based on data taken from the experience of 
a hundred business houses of various kinds, covering 
a period of three or four years. The weekly salaries 
marked on the chart are neither the high scale of cities 
like Chicago, nor the low rate of small towns, but are 
an attempted average for the whole country. 

In a letter to the writer he adds: 

The number of firms furnishing data was over 100, 
covering all parts of the country and practically every 
branch of business and technical work. The number 
of men in the service of these houses at present is over 
15,000. In the case of a number of firms, the period 
of investigation was twelve to fifteen years, in others 
it was no longer than three years. 

Mr. Hapgood 's investigation presents the 
following facts (Chart I) : 

AVERAGE NON-COLLEGE GROUP 

The average non-college man enters busi- 
ness at eighteen years of age at $3 per week; 



34 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

advances steadily to $13.20 at about twenty- 
three; then at a less rapid rate to $15 at 
twenty-six years, only twenty-five per cent 
advancing beyond this wage to any marked 
degree. 

AVERAGE OF COLLEGE GROUP 

The average of this group enters business 
at twenty- two years of age at $9 per week; 
advances at a relatively rapid rate to $16 
at twenty-four; then less rapidly to $22 at 
twenty-seven. The data do not permit con- 
clusions as to further advancement, but 85 
per cent of those included within the investi- 
gation were still advancing. 

An unpublished study of the careers of the 
graduates of the Amos Tuck School of Ad- 
ministration and Finance, Dartmouth Col- 
lege, has to do with a somewhat different class 
of men. The Tuck School is a graduate school 
of business; its graduates, therefore, are not 
only college-trained men, but are men who 
have had an additional year of business train- 
ing of, a higher grade than would be possible 
for men without a previous college training. 
Inasmuch as the Tuck School had graduated 
but four classes at the time of this investi- 
gation, the number of careers investigated 
was small. The study resulted as follows 
(Chart I): 



EFFICIENCY INDICATED 35 

TUCK SCHOOL GROUP 

The graduates left the Tuck School and 
entered business at the median age of twenty- 
three years, six months, at the median wage of 
$10 per week. From that point the advance 
was at a moderate rate to $15.40 at twenty-six 
years, six months ; then at a very rapid rate to 
a median wage of $28.51 at twenty-seven 
years, six months. The first class having been 
out of the school but four years, data as to 
further advancement did not exist. 

These studies, investigating different classes 
of labor, but each comparing trained with 
non-trained labor, arrive at identical conclu- 
sions, — that as indicated by wages, which is 
the expression of the employer's estimate of 
the value of the services purchased, labor 
which has been trained in a technical school 
is more eflBcient than that not so trained. 
Whether judged by absolute wage earned at 
a given age, or by rate of advancement, trade- 
school trained labor is more efficient than 
shop-trained labor; that which has received 
a college education more efl&cient than that 
which has not been so educated; and there 
are indications that that which has received, 
in addition to a liberal college education, 
special technical training of an advanced 
grade, is more efficient than any of the others. 



36 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

This comparison is true not only for those 
entering engineering careers, but, as evi- 
denced by the Hapgood and the Tuck School 
investigations, for those entering such careers 
as banking, insurance, railroading, commerce, 
and general business. 



PART II 

OUTLINE OF A SYSTEM OF INDUSTRIAL 
EDUCATION FOR THE UNITED STATES 



VII 

Fundamental Considerations — A System of 
Industrial Education must he adapted to the 
Existing Educational System and to the Na- 
ture of the Services for which it is intended 
to train 

Accepting the validity of the arguments « 

which have been presented in the preced- 
ing pages, one must recognize that the indus- 
trial situation in the United States demands \/ 
the development of a system of technical r 
training for young men entering trade and 
commerce. The development of this institu- 
tion, which is superior to any other in increas- 
ing industrial efficiency, if not demanded as 
a matter of necessity, is at least desirable as 
a matter of precaution. It is now the pur- 
pose of this essay to consider the general con- 
ditions of the development of such a system 
of technical education, as well as some of the 
practical aspects of the problems involved. 
Preliminary to such a consideration, it is 
necessary to recall two fundamental facts of 
education. 

In the first place, education is not only an 
instrument used by society for raising the 
general level of intelligence, but is also, as has 



40 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

been suggested earlier in this essay, an instru- 
ment of social selection. No two individuals 
are borji with identical abilities or with iden- 
tical temperaments. All individuals cannot 
be equally successful in any given activities of 
life, nor can all become equally of utility to 
society in these activities. There is in every 
society and in every stage of civilization a 
process of selection continually in operation; 
but with no peoples is it operating so effect- 
ively as with those peoples who, by a highly 
developed system of public education, offer 
to its members equality of opportunity for 
self-realization. Equality of opportunity does 
not result in the absolute equality of individ- 
uals; it results in the development of differ- 
ences where such differences constitute an 
integrating instead of a disintegrating social 
force. Equality of opportunity, expressed in 
a system of education which is broad as to the 
\ classes it reaches and broad as to the activities 
for which it trains, increases the probability 
that young men, with their varying natural 
abilities, will undergo a selection, reciprocal 
between society and the individual, which will 
develop them for those activities of life for 
which they are respectively adapted. It may 
be affirmed, therefore, that not only should 
a general system of public education offer 
equal opportunities of development to all 



FUNDAMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS 41 

classes and for all activities, but that any 
branch of the general system which looks 
towards the development of individuals for 
a specific group of activities, should also offer 
opportunities to all classes and should offer 
the possibility of training for all the activities 
of the group. A system of industrial educa- 
tion, for instance, must not be a rigid, inflex- 
ible instrument, attempting to shape all the 
individuals it touches after the same image; 
it must accentuate differences of ability and 
of temperament. 

In the second place, except in those rare 
instances of highly centralized states which 
are able to impose upon their peoples educa- 
tional systems created de novo, such an insti- 
tution must be the result of gradual develop- 
ment. When its scope is enlarged to meet new 
situations, to reach new classes or to train for 
new activities, this enlargement should be 
accomplished neither by creating new instru- 
ments unrelated to the general system, nor by 
wholly reconstructing the already existing sys- 
tem. This should be accomplished by devel- 
oping new members which fit into the existing 
system and which become integral parts of it. 
This is especially true of the United States, 
for in spite of an original "freedom from in- 
herited and over-conservative ideas," its peo- 
ple have a conservatism of their own. The 



42 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

complacent satisfaction in things American is 
a species of conservatism. One expression of 
this is a satisfaction with the existing system 
of public education. Like an amendment to 
the Constitution, a reconstruction of this sys- 
tem or a radical adaptation of it to meet new 
conditions, would be practically impossible. 
Not even all enlightened opinion is convinced 
that the present institutions of education are 
not adequate enough for industrial training; * 
or that there are conditions demanding special 
schools for industrial education. 

In view of these two general educational 
facts, the question of a method of education 
best suited for men entering upon trade and 
commerce must be considered as a relative 
one. It must be relative to the institutions 
already existing, which must be utilized and to 
which it must be adapted. It must also reach 
a large number of classes and train for a great 
number of industrial activities, for the field of 
trade and commerce is a comprehensive one. 
In fact it may reasonably be defined as includ- 
ing all forms of industrial services, except that 
of unskilled labor, for the great mass of young 
men entering business serve their apprentice- 
ship as wage-earners. Their training must 
equip them for efficient service at the bottom, 
as well as for an efficient life-work at the top. 

1 New York Evening Post, editorial, March 15, 1904. 



VIII 

Classification of Industrial Services 

A CLASSIFICATION of seivices demanded of 
those engaged in industrial activities is diffi- 
cult. The analysis is difficult because of the 
many points of view that may be taken, and 
because, examined from any one point, classes 
shade one into another. The classification 
must, in the nature of things, be artificial, and 
there will be unavoidable cross-classification. 
The groups of services to which a system 
of industrial education must be adapted, may 
be classified fundamentally according to the 
degree in which they are mechanical or man- 
agerial. The exact line between mechanical 
functions and managerial functions cannot 
be indicated. It may be safely said that on 
the one hand the function performed by the 
manager of a manufacturing institution is 
characteristically managerial, and that on 
the other hand the function performed by un- 
skilled labor is characterized by its mechanical 
nature. Between these extremes exists a large 
number of functions each conspicuous for one 
or the other of these characteristics. Services 
may also be contrasted as pertaining to pri- 
mary processes, such as the transformation of 



44 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

raw material, or to mercantile processes, such 
as the selling of goods at retail and the oflBce 
work of factories. They may be contrasted 
again according to the degree in which science 
is applied in the performance of the functions ; 
the chemist in the laboratory of a steel plant 
may be contrasted with the workman who 
mixes under his direction the ore, coke, and 
limestone. Uniting these various principles, 
the accompanying classification may be pre- 
sented (Chart II). 

The upper left-hand triangle represents 
roughly the field of characteristically mechan- 
ical services ; the lower right-hand triangle 
the field of managerial services. As indicated, 
management is not entirely absent in the 
upper field and mechanical labor not entirely 
absent in the lower. Skill in management 
does not imply the absence of technical skill; 
the latter is logically a condition precedent. 
Skill in management implies rather the ab- 
sence of the exercise of technical functions and 
not of a knowledge of them. Of the classes 
falling in the middle of the rectangle is re- 
quired the exercise of both mechanical and 
managerial skill. 

It must also be observed that not only is 
there a lower and a higher order of services, 
judged by the presence or absence of ability 
for management, but also that in the field of 



MECHANICAL 

I. UNSKILLED LABOR 
IL SKILLED LABOR 

1. Mechanical, sach as 
Tool and Maehine Workers 
Office Clerks 
Salesmen, ete. 

2. Scientific, such as 
Cliemists 
Engineei's 
Accountants 
Actuaries 

Foreign Exchange Cler) 
Factory Statisticians, 

MANAGERIAL 

in. MANAGERIAL LABO/fe U t'ltafe 



Performing function 
managerial ability, . 

Foremen 

Chief Clerks 

Department 

Private Sec 



M q u r n g 





IV. MANAGERI, 
In less im 
such as 
Man 
Seer; 

V.MAN 
Co: 



will 



rJAlEiqRHtliid 
lair 



coiife-iiei 
^h<l£nien;al 



i)((j:a:tiiieit8 
jte. 



Gh'Up 
rudtiiiiiM 



ri<(C 



Se(oi<[ jrr<u> 



[lit i(!al 



with 



( rr 01 1{ 

lor i:;iii|; ihe 



oliticn}^ 



%\x\ 



X\iX 



prCC<>S3<S 



liQK. 



vw 



niecliankal 



Mechanical 



I 1 1 I I I Managerial 



CHART n. 



46 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

services characteristically mechanical and in 
the field characteristically managerial, there 
is a lower and a higher order. The clerk be- 
hind the counter, and the accountant in the 
office, represent different degrees of skill, as 
do the manager of a department in the de- 
partment store and the manager of a great 
corporation. 

To those who have given no thought to the 
division of labor in a modern industrial state, 
such a visualized analysis is astonishing. For 
such readers it will emphasize two points 
which have been made in this essay, — the 
complexity of modern industry, and the fact 
that the young man entering business to-day 
will be performing so specialized a service 
that his opportunity for acquiring breadth of 
view by "experience," compared with that of 
his predecessor, will be extremely limited. It 
is through skilled labor of the mechanical sort 
that the majority of young men must advance 
to the rank of managerial labor, and the out- 
look afforded in the earlier positions is nar- 
row. The young man cannot start with too 
great a capacity for perceiving relationships. 

To another class of readers such a visual- 
ized analysis must be discouraging rather than 
astonishing, — to that class of readers of non- 
constructive mind who will question how any 
system of education can be developed to train 



CLASSIFICATION OF SERVICES 47 

technically for all these functions. It is only 
necessary to recall to them that the problem 
involved is not one of creating de novo an 
instrument of training for a highly developed 
industrial state. It is simply the problem of 
increasing the skill of an already skillful peo- 
ple by increasing the efficiency of an already 
efficient educational system. It is necessary 
at this point to review our educational system, 
both as to its present training for industrial 
pursuits and as to its adaptability to more 
special industrial training. 



IX 

Classification of Existing Educational 
Institutions — General and Industrial 

It has been suggested that, because of the 
fact that natural growth has characterized 
the development of educational institutions 
in the United States, a system of training for 
trade and commerce must also be a result of 
growth, and particularly of growth out of the 
existing system. We cannot create de novo 
as have the Germans. It has also been sug- 
gested that, while there is nothing that can 
be called a system of industrial training, there 
do exist in the United States trade and com- 
mercial schools, and that the development of 
a system, if it be desirable, should recognize 
these schools because they indicate the lines 
of natural growth. It is necessary at this 
point, therefore, to consider the existing in- 
stitutions on which as a base the special sys- 
tem should be reared. For our purpose a 
careful and detailed consideration is unneces- 
sary, and would be superfluous in view of the 
excellent descriptions which are accessible 
to all.^ 

^ Edmond J. James, Commercial Education in the United States; 
Cheesman A. Herrick, Commercial Education. 



GENERAL AND INDUSTRIAL 49 

The general school system of the United 
States in its public nature is democratic and 
comprehensive. A rough classification pre- 
sents the following: 

1. Primary and grammar schools taking 
the child to the age of twelve or fourteen years. 

2. Secondary schools, comprising high 
schools and academies, which take the student 
to sixteen or eighteen years of age. As at pre- 
sent organized, the curricula of these schools 
are designed to prepare for college and uni- 
versity work, although, recognizing the large 
number to whom further education is impos- 
sible, the curricula are beginning to be made 
more general. 

3. Colleges and universities, varying greatly 
in efficiency, including the colleges of a de- 
nominational character in the Middle West, 
the colleges of New England, the older univer- 
sities of the East and the state universities. 
These institutions take the student to about 
the age of twenty-two or twenty- three years. 

4. The graduate schools of the universities of 
the above class, giving an additional period of 
from one to three years of specialized training. 

This classification does not include agricul- 
tural colleges, normal schools, nor the pro- 
fessional schools of law and medicine, asso- 
ciated with the colleges or comprised within 
the universities. 



50 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

Turning to the existing schools of trade and 
commerce, we find a more heterogeneous 
group : 

1. Private commercial schools and business 
colleges, which do not pretend to offer an edu- 
cation the equivalent of that offered by high 
schools and academies, but which offer train- 
ing in the more mechanical forms of business 
practice, for those students who are unable 
to continue a general education beyond the 
grammar school.^ The subject-matter of these 
schools consists essentially of commercial 
mathematics, bookkeeping, penmanship, 
shorthand and typewriting. 

2. The commercial schools and business 
colleges having been found to attract students 
who might continue the more liberal training 
of the public schools,^ short commercial 
courses were introduced into the curricula of 
many high schools. Out of this beginning 
has grown the four-year commercial course ^ 
which has found its place in a few of the more 
advanced high schools. In some instances, 
such as the Central High School of Commerce 
of Philadelphia and the New York High 
School of Commerce, these commercial 
courses are offered in a separately organized 
institution, coordinate with the high school 
whose primary aim is to prepare for college. 

1 Herrick, p. 196. ^ Ibid. p. 216. ^ 7^,^-^. pp, 2I6, 217. 



GENERAL AND INDUSTRIAL 51 

The curricula of these schools unite much of 
the liberal subject-matter of the older high 
school with the commercial subject-matter of 
the business college, offering such studies as 
English, history, modern language, element- 
ary science, elementary mathematics, ele- 
mentary economics, commercial geography, 
bookkeeping, and shorthand. 

3. There have appeared in recent years a 
few distinctly trade-schools, such as the Lowell 
Textile School, whose aim is to train for spe- 
cific trades. These schools are not numerous, 
but the beginning is significant, as indicating 
a tendency to recognize the value of special 
training as a means of developing expert labor 
for specific trades. Belonging to schools of 
this class, but less formally organized, should 
be mentioned schools or courses of training 
offered by such manufacturing institutions as 
the Baldwin Locomotive Works. 

4. Representing a grade of training between 
the commercial work of the commercial high 
school and the commercial work of the col- 
leges and universities, there has appeared the 
New York University School of Commerce, 
Accounts, and Finance. As compared with the 
commercial high school it carries its students 
more deeply into the same class and into a 
more advanced class of commercial subjects; 
it develops bookkeeping, for instance, through 



52 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

a four-year course into accounting, auditing, 
and even into special applications of the prin- 
ciples, as in the accountancy of investments. 
As compared v^ith the commercial depart- 
ments of the college and universities, except 
in accounting, its technical subject-matter is 
not so advanced, and it does not offer the lib- 
eralizing training of the social sciences.^ 

5. As early as 1881 the University of Penn- 
sylvania, in the Wharton School, and more 
recently a number of universities — Califor- 
nia, Chicago, Illinois, Michigan, Vermont, and 
Wisconsin — organized commercial courses 
coordinate with or as a part of the existing 
courses in liberal arts, and in many instances 
leading to the same bachelor's degree as the 
latter. Some of these courses extend through 
the four years of the college course and some 
through the last two and into a graduate year. 
The training of these courses is character- 
ized by an attention to applied economics and 
the more general principles of business, and 
acquaints the students with the simpler meth- 
ods and principles of such specialized forms 
of business as banking and transportation. 
Coordinate with these commercial courses of 
the universities, but enjoying the advantages 
of actually or practically separate organiza- 

^ Since the above was written a day course, more extended and 
more liberal, has been introduced. 



GENERAL AND INDUSTRIAL 53 

tion, are tlie engineering schools of these 
institutions and such schools as the Mas- 
sachusetts Institute of Technology and the 
Worcester Polytechnic Institute. 

6. The Tuck School, associated with Dart- 
mouth College, has organized its commercial 
work on a higher plane than the universities 
above named, requiring practically a college 
education for entrance, and then on the foun- 
dation thus afforded, offering a more thorough 
training in the more highly developed and 
technical forms of business, such as banking, 
insurance, transportation, and foreign com- 
merce. It attempts to offer a training for 
business of the same grade as that offered by 
engineering, law, and medical schools for their 
respective fields. This school is coordinate 
with the graduate schools of the universities, 
but is distinctly professional, and is not of the 
nature of a graduate school of economics. 

This classification of the existing institutions 
of commercial education in the United States 
indicates that there exists a system of general 
education reaching all classes, and the nucleus 
of a system of industrial training for all classes. 
In the light of the classification of industrial 
services for which training is desirable, as pre- 
sented on an earlier page, what practical sug- 
gestions as to the development of such a gen- 
eral system present themselves ? 



X 

The Extension of the System of Specialized 
Industrial Schools 

Having in mind the classes that enter into 
the various grades of labor and the ages at 
which they enter, and recalling the analyses 
of the industrial functions and of the existing 
institutions of education presented in the 
preceding sections, one may agree with Mr. 
Herrick^ that those for whom our plans 
should be made comprise three classes : 

(1) Those who are compelled to take positions at 
fourteen or fifteen years, who at best complete the 
course of the elementary school through the grammar 
school, and some of whom can give a brief additional 
time to preparation for their life-work; (2) those who 
can give three or four years to additional training, who 
are able to complete the course of the secondary school; 
and (3) those who can yet give other years to higher 
training. 

Slightly modifying Mr. Herrick's proposi- 
tion, we may agree further that there should 
be (1) some form of continuous training for 
the first of these classes, of which it would 
be possible to take advantage while most of 
the time is spent in the factory or office; 
(2) schools of trade and commerce coordinate 

1 Commercial Education, p. 277. 



EXTENSION OF THE SYSTEM 55 

with the high school for the second of these 
classes; and (3) institutions of college and 
professional-school rank, pursuing work more 
advanced and more specialized. 

It is at once apparent that these three needs 
are met, however inejfficiently, by the exist- 
ing institutions for industrial education, and 
that they may be more efficiently met by a 
further development of these institutions. The 
immediate problem that confronts us there- 
fore is : how may these existing institutions be 
developed so as better to meet these needs ? 
This problem presents two phases : (1) How 
should the institutions of trade and commerce 
be organized so as to utilize the existing edu- 
cational system, at the same time making 
industrial training possible to those who do 
not now continue formal study into the more 
advanced schools; and (2) what should be 
the aim and content of the curricula of the 
various grades of industrial schools ? 

In entering upon a consideration of the first 
of these phases one is compelled to take issue 
with one of Mr. Herrick's propositions: that 
special should not overshadow general in- 
struction in secondary schools.^ Mr. Herrick 
seems to have in mind secondary commercial 
schools, and to mean that whatever the aim 
and grade of the educational institution, the 

* Commercial Education, p. 278. 



56 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

fundamental consideration should be the 
general education of the youth or man, and 
that the special education for industrial serv- 
ice should always be secondary. It seems 
better to propose that the general training, 
which should be continued as long as the in- 
dividual's circumstances will permit, should 
follow the course offered by the existing 
educational system, and that, whenever and 
wherever along the way the youth or man is 
compelled by his circumstances to turn his 
attention to fitting himself for the struggle of 
life to which those circumstances assign him, 
he should find at hand an instrument, direct 
and practical, to prepare him for his particu- 
lar life-work. The liberal training, whether 
in the grammar or the high school, in the col- 
lege or the university, should come first, and 
in the method and subject-matter should be 
truly and formally disciplinary and cultural; 
the special training should follow and be built 
upon the liberal training, and should be direct 
and practical as to its subject-matter. The 
former should be concerned with "tradition," 
the latter with "practice"; * the former with 
the discipline of the mind, with the develop- 
ment of the character; the latter with the 
development of skill. Such a distinction in 

^ George Santayana, Oberlin College Commencement Address, 
June, 1904. 



EXTENSION OF THE SYSTEM 57 

methods and aims would result in a greater 
ultimate efficiency. 

Happy indeed should we be, were it possible 
to assume that to every individual is offered 
the choice of a long period of continuous 
training, and in that case one would hesitate 
to disagree with Mr. Herrick's proposition. 
But such is not the case. One of the serious 
educational problems of the day is that im- 
posed by the fact that so many pupils are 
compelled to withdraw from formal training 
at the end of the elementary period, that the 
most of those who go on are compelled to 
withdraw at the end of the secondary period, 
and that only a few are able to continue to the 
end of formal training. Considering the great 
difference in the means of families, and the 
great difference in the aptitudes of youths and 
men; considering the fact that our system of 
free public education makes it possible for so 
many to begin a formal education who must 
sooner or later withdraw, one must insist that 
the assumption is false that industrial finish- 
ing schools, intensely practical and special- 
ized, should not exist at frequent intervals 
along the highway of general education. Any 
other plan must leave a great number to be 
turned by the exigencies of life from this high- 
way into the side roads of practical affairs, 
developed on the side of character, but with 



58 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

no special skill for those activities that lie 
before thera. From the primary grade to the 
doctor's degree there is in operation a process 
of selection, and at whatever point one is 
turned from the road there should be found 
a school for specialized training. 

Proceeding upon the assumption, therefore, 
that while all individuals should enjoy as long 
a period of general education as possible, all 
are not able to do so; that individuals are 
compelled to withdraw at all points along the 
route; and that at whatever point along the 
route a group withdraws there should be 
found an institution for direct specialized 
training for life's work, one may construct 
the following schematic chart. 



Free Compulsory Public 
Education TERiviiNATiriG 



IN THE Grammar 



r:r^ 



Scfioo/s 

o/i^/ce 0/70^ " 
o/Aer /"ot/f/fte 

Specialized 
Pro cfic a I 
Flexible as fo 
lenqth of course 



_^^ 



HIGH 

SCHOOL 

TRAINING 



CULTURAL 
DISCIPLINARY 
TRADITIONAL 



Tra/'/my /a?/- " ■ * 
roe/f/>fe ru/7cf- 
/o/?s o/ac/j/a/) 

Specialized 

Practical 

Flexible OS +0 

lenq+h of comts^ 



COLLEGE 
TRAINING 



CULTURAL 

OISCIPLINARV 
TRAOmONAL 



School 



Schoo/s 
/»ecAaf/f/cat/ 

Specialized 

Proc+ical 

Flexible as fo 

lengfh of course 



s\ 



Oa^ a/fc^Si/e/t/hy 
'Sc/?oo/s - 
7ra//?//7y for 
/}7ecAa'/?/car/ 

</e/l/^(ff/Tce^/ orzyer 

Practical 

Flexible as fo 

length of course 



University Training-Professional 



Law 



Mcoic 

-INE 



Teach 

-IN6 



COM- 
IVtERCC 



PUBUC 
SCRVICt 



EN6IN£CR 
-ING 



Et 
cetera 



CHART m. 



XI 

The Extension of the System of Specialized 
Industrial Schools (continued) 

Ijike all systems presented in a formal class- 
ification, the one here outlined seems at first 
glance rigid and ill-adapted to complex con- 
ditions. The chief reasons for its recommend- 
ation, nevertheless, are, first, it is adapted to 
meet the requirements of training for the many 
classes of individuals entering industrial life; 
second, it is adapted to train for all classes of 
industrial services; and third, it is adjustable 
to the existing system of general education. 
It should be remarked also, that the divisions 
indicated are logical rather than institutional, 
and that training for classes of services here 
differentiated may be offered by a single insti- 
tution. The purpose of this scheme is to em- 
phasize the idea of distinct practical training 
for distinct functions, not to suggest a separate 
institution for each different line of training. 
On the other hand, a fundamental idea of the 
theory here presented is, that industrial train- 
ing as a whole should be offered by institu- 
tions organized separately from the institu- 
tions of the general educational system. An 
inquiry as to whether the industrial schools 



EXTENSION OF THE SYSTEM 61 

should be private or public or both does not 
fall within the purpose of this essay. 

Examining the chart, it is apparent that the 
scheme recognizes that a large number of 
pupils are unable to continue a formal educa- 
tion beyond the grammar school. Speaking 
broadly, the members of this class must take 
their place in the rank of relatively unskilled 
labor. With a suitable training for some in- 
dustrial service in addition to the primary 
training of the public school, they may, how- 
ever, find a place in the very front rank of the 
relatively unskilled group, and may even, as 
compared with the factory labor of to-day, 
become relatively skilled labor. The reason 
why children of this class withdraw before 
receiving a high school training is in most 
cases either the limited resources of the 
parents, or dissatisfaction of the parents or 
of the child, with an "unpractical schooling." 
It is probable that were there a variety of 
industrial schools oiffering training for specific 
trades, the majority of these youths would be 
attracted to them and their parents would 
find it possible to afford them the additional 
technical instruction. In the system suggested 
there is offered for such, first, the trade-school, 
a school offering a brief training for some 
definite trade, — in the textile mill or the 
machine-shop, or for carpentering and cabinet- 



62 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

making. There is offered, second, a primary 
commercial school, similar to the German 
Kaujmdnnische Foribildungsschulen, or our 
own commercial high schools, training the 
youth for office- work in mercantile or manu- 
facturing institutions. Schools of this order 
should be organized to carry on simultane- 
ously day instruction for youths able to give 
all day to attendance, and evening instruction 
for youths serving their apprenticeship at the 
same time in some trade. These trade and 
commercial schools are coordinate in rank, 
it will be observed, with the high school of 
the general system. Their courses should 
be organized, however, with a flexibility that 
would permit as long a period as four years 
or as short a period as one year of technical 
training. 

While it should be the aim of the state to 
decrease the number of those compelled to 
withdraw from the public schools at the end 
of the primary period, as long as there is 
a considerable class of youths who must with- 
draw, as is the case, for example, in the 
manufacturing cities of the Atlantic States, 
the opportunity for a technical training should 
be afforded. 

For those youths able to complete the 
secondary period of general education, the 
system suggested provides a higher grade of 



EXTENSION OF THE SYSTEM 63 

technical instruction. The trade and com- 
mercial schools of this rank should also ajfford 
day and evening instruction for those youths 
respectively who are and are not able to give 
all their time to the continuation of technical 
training. With regard to those students who 
are now compelled to withdraw upon com- 
pletion of the high school course, it may be 
said, as was said of the group above, that, 
a technical training made possible, many par- 
ents would find themselves able to afford it 
for their sons, and many sons would find them- 
selves inclined towards a further education. 
On the basis of a longer period of formal 
discipline and of a wider knowledge of facts, 
such schools should offer training of an ad- 
vanced order, similar to that offered by such 
institutions as the Worcester Polytechnic 
Institute in engineering, or the New York 
University School of Commerce, Accounts, 
and Finance in accounting and auditing, or 
the Handelslehranstalt of Leipzig. 

Schools of this grade, it will be observed, 
are coordinate with the average college and 
university. It will be observed also that train- 
ing of this rank is not provided in the existing 
commercial courses offered by six or eight 
of our leading universities. While later in the 
discussion there will be recognized a certain 
value in the commercial training offered in 



^ rsDrSTIlIAL EDUCATION 

these institutioiis. at this point, when the 
ideal system of greatest efficiencr is being 
considered, it is necessary to adhere to the 
fundamental proposition of this essay, that 
the industrial school, of whatever rank in the 
scale, must have that intensely practical and 
professional characteristic made possible onhr 
by the separate organization. One of the 
reasons for the snccess with which Germany 
h as built up so efficient a system of industrial 
education is her attitude toward the occupa- 
tions of trade and commerce as professions. 
The TreaTing of commercial courses into the 
eouises of Hberal arts in our uniTersities does 
not tend to assist the development of the pro- 
fessional esprit. 

At the apes of the pyramid of our general 
educational system, we find the college and 
the university. An increasinir number ^ of 
men intending to enter business pursue their 
formal training through the four years of 
higher education. This practice received its 
impetus probably from the sons of the leisure 
cla ss whose business means the care of in- 
herited wealth, a business not so exacting as 
to deprive them of social enjoyments. Gradu- 
ally, with the widening of the university cur- 
riculum, it was found that the university 
training was valuable in developing business 

^ Waring Waii, Mav, IdOi, p. 4T69. 



EXTENSION OF THE SYSTEM 6.5 

ability, and a custom which originated for 
social purposes has developed into a custom 
for business training. The adaptability, orig- 
inality, and broadness of mind developed by 
the university training, have been tested by the 
complex situations of modem business, and 
have not been found wanting. 

The system here presented provides for 
specialized schools coordinate with the gradu- 
ate schools of preparation for the teaching, 
medical, engineering, and legal professions. 
Consistency has been maintained to the end 
of the scheme, for at this stage it is proposed 
that the training for the business profession 
shall follow the college training; in the arts and 
sciences, shall be in fact a training, special- 
ized and practical, with direct reference to 
life's work. The question arises, is there a 
body of training, of a practical nature, for the 
business career, so advanced and specialized 
as to require its deferment until a foundation 
has been laid in the college and university 
arts course ? A moment's consideration will 
convince one that there is. 

It is a well-known by-word among those 
engaged on the actuarial side of the insurance 
profession that it is impossible to open the 
covers of the *' Institute of Actuaries' Text- 
Book" without a knowledge of calculus. This 
exaggerated statement does not convey the 



66 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

full truth as to the high degree of technical 
skill required to become proficient in that pro- 
fession. The mastering of the technique of 
this profession, which involves the application 
to an industrial activity of the theories of 
probability and of compound interest, re- 
quires a thorough preparation in mathematics, 
a preparation which can be secured only in 
institutions of college rank. This on the side 
of method only. In addition, for that sound 
understanding of the nature of the data to 
which the method must be applied, — not 
hard, well-defined facts, but the elusive, ever- 
changing facts of the social life, — there is 
required that clearness of the perception of 
relationships which can be acquired by the 
average man only through the formal training 
offered by higher education. 

The same may be said of certain specialized 
forms of banking, if not of banking generally. 
A graduate of a school of the rank of the one 
under discussion was asked what was the most 
difficult subject he had pursued in his career 
as a student. His reply came promptly, — 
"Foreign exchange." Further questions elic- 
ited the opinion that but little could have 
been accomplished in his study without the 
basis of the college training; he asserted, in 
fact, that he had not mastered the subject 
very thoroughly with his additional year of 



EXTENSION OF THE SYSTEM 67 

specialized study. Banking institutions of the 
United States as a rule intrust the buying 
of foreign exchange only to clerks who have 
received their training in the commercial 
schools of equivalent rank in Europe.^ 

As a third illustration we may cite the banks 
and special institutions engaged in the buying 
and selling of bonds. Ability of the highest 
order is required for very great advancement 
in the services of such institutions, especially 
on that side concerned with the purchase of 
the bonds which they offer for sale. The abil- 
ity to estimate the value of bonds by deter- 
mining the value of the properties on which 
they rest, is acquired only by a training in 
corporation finance, a training that yields the 
best results when approached with faculties 
which are developed by a thorough study of 
economics. In like manner we might exam- 
ine the requirements of the business con- 
cerned with transportation and with inter- 
national trading. There is no doubt in our 
judgment about the call for services of this 
high order from business in the United States 
to-day. 

^ Cf . Herrick, pp. 86 ff. for a brief description of German schools 
of equivalent rank. For details of curricula, cf. Handels-Hochschtd- 
Nachrichten, March, 1905, pp. 240 ff. 



XII 

The Curricula of the Schools of the Extended 
System 

In organizing the curriculum of an industrial 
school, regard must be had for the general 
equipment of the classes of students it receives, 
for the classes of society from which they 
come, for the industrial characteristics of the 
region in which it is located, and for the nature 
and state of the businesses for which it is 
intended to train. For this reason, to suggest 
a hard and fast curriculum would not be wise; 
each curriculum should be determined with 
reference to local conditions. It is the pur- 
pose, therefore, in this consideration of the 
subject, to give attention only to general 
principles. 

The aim of industrial education as a social 
institution, technical eflficiency, should be 
found expressed with especial clearness in the 
aims of its curricula. Formal discipline and 
culture as an aim should be left to the general 
system. At whatever point along the way the 
youth turns from the highway of general 
education to the side road of industrial educa- 
tion, he should leave general training for 
specialized training. The technical efficiency. 



CURRICULA OF THE SCHOOLS 69 

however, at which the specialized curriculum 
should aim must not be conceived too nar- 
rowly. It should embrace at least a twofold 
efficiency; efficiency in performing technical, 
mechanical, and mental processes, and effi- 
ciency in forming judgments in technical 
affairs. The second part of this definition 
explains the place, for instance, of history 
and economics in the curricula of industrial 
schools. 

The first general principle to be observed 
is that the curriculum should have such sub- 
ject-matter and be so organized as to promote 
the professional esprit. Besides making the 
subject-matter relate directly to the career 
for which the student is training, this result 
may be accomplished in three ways. First, 
the curriculum of the industrial school should 
have a distinct organization, separate from 
the organization of schools with other aims 
with which it may be associated. This does 
not mean that, for a few subjects, students of 
the two schools may not attend the same 
classes; but such identity should be avoided 
as far as possible. The professional spirit 
resulting from a distinct identity should not 
be sacrificed to economy. Second, the corps 
of instructors of the industrial school should 
be as distinct as possible, and should be thor- 
oughly trained for instruction in technical 



70 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

subjects. Broad general knowledge, fullness 
of technical knowledge, enthusiasm as a 
teacher and the professional spirit should be 
the qualifications sought. Third, the influence 
of the curriculum should be disciplinary in its 
own way, not only as to its influence on the 
methods of teaching and studying, but also 
as making for enthusiasm for work on the 
part of the student. In the curricula of the 
schools of the general system, recognition 
should be given to the value of activities not 
related to instruction, but when the student 
has entered upon his training for work, he 
should be inspired to make that training a 
business. 

The second general principle to be proposed 
is that the subject-matter of the curriculum 
should be practical and technical. It should 
be descriptive rather than historical, practical 
rather than theoretical. It should not be 
understood as advocating the use of artificial 
money and other toys of so-called courses in 
"business practice"; for students who have 
left the grammar schools, teaching by such 
methods is of doubtful value. Neither does it 
imply that the historical and the theoretical 
should have no place in the curriculum, nor 
that many subjects that are considered by stu- 
dents as merely theoretical have no value as 
making for technical efficiency. For its purpose. 



CURRICULA OF THE SCHOOLS 71 

those courses may be considered as technical 
that make for skill in performing the mech- 
anical and mental processes involved in the 
routine of one's business; that give a know- 
ledge of the principles and facts related to 
one's business ; and that develop the power of 
judging situations arising in one's business 
quickly and accurately, and of determining 
lines of action in accordance with these judg- 
ments. The second general principle insists 
that the special shall dominate the curriculum.^ 
Recent observers of the German edu- 
cational system have criticised its curricula 
as being so technical as to defeat in part its 
very aim by making the German student, 
although scientific, narrow and lacking in 
initiative. They have warned American edu- 
cators against a similar error. They over- 
look the fact that this narrowness and lack 
of initiative are the results of the German's 
entire social environment, and not merely of 
his educational methods. Granting, how- 
ever, that an extremely technical curriculum 
may intensify these characteristics, it does 
not follow that the same curriculum would 
have the same results when applied to the 
American youth. That common American 
temperament which is the very opposite of 
dependent, which relies upon natural ability 

1 Cf. pp. 58ff. 



72 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

and is impatient of laboriously acquired know- 
ledge, needs the corrective of an intensely 
technical and scientific training. The Ger- 
man youth, to correct the influence of his 
social environment, needs more of the liberal 
in his curriculum; the American youth, to 
correct the influence of his social environ- 
ment, needs more of the technical. 

The third general principle is a more 
special statement of the second; the curricu- 
lum should be so comprehensive and flexible 
as to afford the student direct training for 
some specific occupation. Subjects present- 
ing principles common to all business activity 
should be pursued by all students, but stu- 
dents should not be led to dip into first one 
and then another of the studies offered, cover- 
ing the whole range in this manner with the 
idea that they are securing a technical train- 
ing. 

Unless the reader has followed carefully 
the presentation of these general principles, 
and has borne in mind fundamental princi- 
ples previously presented, too early and too 
narrow specialization may seem to have been 
advocated. The intention has been, rather, 
to criticise the existing educational system 
and existing courses in commercial educa- 
tion, as encouraging too early and too narrow 
specialization. It seems desirable at this 



CURRICULA OF THE SCHOOLS 73 

point to summarize and repeat the thesis of 
this essay; that a general education, whose 
aim should be discipline and the development 
of character, should be pursued by all stu- 
dents for as long a period as possible, thereby 
developing the human-nature side and build- 
ing the man before building the artisan and 
specialist; that the varying financial circum- 
stances of families, the varying dispositions 
of parents, and the varying mental abilities 
of youths, bring it about that in all stages of 
the educational system individuals are with- 
drawing to take up life's work; that to pro- 
mote industrial eflBciency there should be at 
each stage of withdrawal industrial schools 
whose aim should be direct, and, in a liberal 
sense, practical, technical training. This in- 
dustrial training should not be woven into the 
curricula of the general educational system, but 
should be separate, compact, and professional. 
The training of the man-side of the individual 
should not be impaired by injecting into it 
training for work; the training for work should 
not be weakened by having to carry the bur- 
den of training for culture. 

The system of industrial education as a 
whole should be flexible and rational. The 
technical training of any youth at any stage 
should be determined by his natural ability 
and his previous acquirements. The training 



74 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

of the earlier stages should be in the more 
general principles of business, and for the 
more general and less highly developed and 
specialized industrial functions; the training 
at the apex of the system should concern 
itself more deeply with the general principles 
of business, and should offer training for those 
functions demanding broad general know- 
ledge and thorough technical knowledge of 
advanced and highly developed forms of 
business. 



XIII 

Managerial Ability and Training 

VIThat has been said about industrial effi- 
ciency has been said with technical efficiency 
in mind. Since presenting the analysis of 
industrial services little has been said about 
managerial ability, and nothing about train- 
ing which might aim at developing it. The 
discussion of this subject has been deferred 
until the concluding section in order that the 
author's view might in that way be indicated, 
that the development of the aptitude for man- 
agement is but indirectly related to formal 
training of any kind. 

Managerial ability may be regarded from 
at least two points of view. It may be looked 
at subjectively, i.e. from the side of the indi- 
vidual exercising it, and objectively, i.e. from 
the side of the activities in which it is exer- 
cised. A consideration of it, approached from 
these two sides, throws much light on the 
question of training to develop managerial 
ability. 

The first element that impresses one in 
considering the subjective side in an individ- 
ual-psychological element. Successful man- 
agement requires force and strength; the 



76 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

individual must be of the motor rather than 
of the sensory class, must project himself 
rather than be the object of the projection of 
other selves. This does not mean that the 
subject must be of the physically aggressive 
class, of the boisterous, bullying class. There 
are many managers of the highest type, irre- 
sistible in their ability to impress themselves 
on others, with the bearing of unassumed 
gentleness and simplicity. It means that the 
subject possessing the ability at critical times 
of appreciating the situation in which he finds 
himself has the power of collecting himself, 
of determining what shall be done and of com- 
pelling, by force of will, the doing of it. The 
normal individual of the motor class possesses 
the fundamental temperamental qualification 
for managerial ability. 

This temperamental characteristic is a 
fundamental condition to successful manage- 
ment, and because it is temperamental, train- 
ing cannot produce it. The pedagogics of 
industrial education, like that of general edu- 
cation, must recognize temperamental differ- 
ences in individuals. For this reason, train- 
ing for management, if it be possible, should 
have to do only with those individuals placed 
by nature in the motor class. 

The second element of managerial ability, 
considered from the same side, is a socially 



MANAGEMENT AND TRAINING 77 

produced characteristic, impossible of defini- 
tion by a word. It is a composite character- 
istic involving adaptabiHty, adjustabihty, and 
other abilities that arise from social contact 
and from a wideness of information, empiric- 
ally acquired, that makes one at home in all 
situations. It is a social product, a product 
of the home, of games, of social activities, of 
travel, of the public schools, and of the college. 
It is a product of informal as much as of 
formal social training; of the captaincy of a 
baseball club or of the management of a col- 
lege paper, as well as of the formal training 
of the high school and the college. 

Leaving out of consideration the excep- 
tional individual, — him in whom the motor 
characteristic is so strong as to be able to 
ignore the lack of the development of the social 
elements, — and having regard only for the 
normal individual of the motor type, it seems 
safe to say that there is no experience for the 
individual that so develops the quality that 
may find its expression in management, as 
college life, — the life of the classroom and the 
life outside. In the college if anywhere, where 
is found "the impact of young thought upon 
young thought, of fresh thought upon fresh 
thought, of hot thought upon hot thought," 
the individual learns to adapt himself to other 
persons and to adjust himself to all situations. 



VS INT)USTRIAL EDUCATION 

That the college- trained man is able to light 
upon Ms feet, whatever happens, has become 
proverbial. His defects are of another sort. 
A great manager's estimate of this all-round 
development is indicated in the requirements 
of the Rhodes scholarships. 

To bring out this second subjective element 
of managerial ability, therefore, the most 
useful instrument that society possesses is 
the high school and the college, with their 
social activities and their formal, cultural 
training. Believing that the high school does 
not alone afford a long enough training to 
bring the social forces into play in the develop- 
ment of ability for management, one cannot 
but be of the opinion that the value of the 
college as developing managerial ability 
should be recognized. Because of the value 
in this respect of such training, the establish- 
m^ent of commercial courses in the universi- 
ties to which reference has been made, should 
be recognized as a step forward.^ They afford 
a certain decrree of technical trainine: alons^ 
with the training that develops this element of 
managerial ability. Their deficiencies lie in 
the fact that the technical element is not 
emphasized in the training, and that they do 
not concentrate the temperamental-social ele- 
ments of managerial ability on their object. 

^ (2. pp. 52 and 64. 



MANAGEMENT AND TRAISISG 7^ 

This leads to a con3iVifeTation of the objective 
side of that ability. 

TTie tf:TriperameritaI factor and the socially 
deveJoperi fac-tor, by therxiselves, do not con- 
stitute managerial ability. The ability for 
management is in a nebnloiis, uncertain state 
until it is made definite by expression in some 
concrete acti^^ty. One may speak of ability 
to manage with reference to a campaign, mili- 
tary- or political, to a manufactory, to a de- 
partment store, to railroad construction, or to 
industrial combination. One cannot conceiTe 
it without some such concrete reference. And 
such a concTete reference implies a thorough 
knowledge of that to which the reference is 
made. The thoroughness of siich knowledge, 
— knowledge of the facts making up the situ- 
ation to be managed, of the relation between 
these facts and of the significance of them, — 
not less than force of will and the abilitv to 
adjust one's self to all situations, determines 
the degree in which managerial ability is pre- 
sent. Force of will and adjustability may be 
present as conspicuously in a ward as in a 
national campaign; the complexity and large- 
ness of the latter is what makes it the ^eater 
problem of management. 

It is the necessity of a broad and deep know- 
ledge of a situation that affords industrial 
education its opportunity for aiding in the 



80 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

development of managerial ability. Its func- 
tion is to supply a necessary factor, a thor- 
ough technical knowledge that is the basis of 
saneness of judgment. Training for business 
of itself cannot develop managerial ability, but 
it can make the other factors of that ability 
operative. It should not seek to develop the 
other factors, except incidentally; that should 
be left to other forces ; it should exert its energy 
in producing technical skill, technical know- 
ledge, and in making possible good judgments 
as to technical situations. 

As in the past, we must rely on nature for 
the production of the temperamental charac- 
teristic ; and on the home, the playground, the 
school, the club, and other group activities for 
the production of the socially developed char- 
acteristic. What education can do is to afford 
in the college social life and the college class- 
room the surest opportunity for acquiring this 
socially developed characteristic; and in the 
technical school, the surest opportunity for 
acquiring a thorough knowledge of the field 
for the exercise of the ability. 

As a corollary to what has been said con- 
cerning managerial ability, for the completion 
of its development one should not look to the 
industrial schools of the lower order. They 
have not the foundation in the development 
of the natural and socially acquired charac- 



MANAGEMENT AND TRAINING 81 

teristics on which to work, and they have not 
the foundation in mental discipline and broad 
information on which to build the knowledge 
of advanced and specialized forms of business. 
For the most efficient managerial ability one 
should look to that development which comes 
from the long training of the grammar school, 
the high school, the college, and finally the 
advanced professional schools of commercial 
education. 

Neither should one deceive one's self into 
imagining that managerial ability so devel- 
oped will be fit to manifest itself at once, or 
will at once find the opportunity to manifest 
itself. The individual with the most thorough 
training must make his complete adjustment 
to the new environment after he has left the 
field of training for the field of labor. He must 
pass through his period of apprenticeship and 
acquire his experience of the narrower sort. 
But that period should be shortened because 
of his training, and he should be able to climb 
to those positions which are the goal of the 
earnest young business man's ambition. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



American temperament, super- 
ficiality criticised by Germans, 
4, 5; wastefulness and careless 
confidence caused by wealth of 
resources, 11. 

Amos Tuck School, 34, 35, 53. 

Apprenticeship, conditions of 
present and past in United 
States compared, 17-21, 81. 

Business, a profession, 64, 69; 
business opportunities, present 
and past, for yoimg men com- 
pared, 17-21. 

College graduates, industrial eflfi- 
ciency of, 34. 

Commercial schools. See Indus- 
trial Schools. 

Complexity of business organiza- 
tion, 17, 18, 46. 

Curricula of industrial schools, 
should aim at efficiency, 68; 
should develop professional 
esprit, 69; should be practical 
and technical, 55-58, 70, 71; 
should be flexible, 73. 

Dodge, James M., address on 
"Money Value of Training," 
28-32. 

Education, a selective force, 40. 

See Industrial Education. 
Educational institutions, general, 

classified, 48, 49; industrial, 

classified, 50-53. See Industrial 

Schools. 
Efficient service, demanded by 

business, 17. 
Employee, value of industrial 

education to, 16-21. 



Employer, value of industrial 

education to, 16-21. 
Experience, as a teacher, 18; not 

sufficient of itself, 19, 20. 

German, observations on iudus- 
trial advantages of the United 
States, 3, 4; observations on 
industrial disadvantages of the 
United States, 4, 5; thorough- 
ness, 7. 

Germany, inferior resources com- 
pensated for by industrial edu- 
cation, 6-8; industrial educa- 
tion in, 8; efficiency illustrated, 
14. 

Hapgood, Herbert J., investiga- 
tion of efficiency of traioing, 33. 

Herrick, Cheesman A., proposi- 
tion regarding special and gen- 
eral instruction in industrial 
curriculum discussed, 55-58. 

Industrial education, German 
criticism of absence of, in 
United States, 4; efficiency of 
German system, 8, 14, 27-36; 
need of in United States, 16-21 ; 
value to employer and to em- 
ployee, 16-21 ; value to society 
and to the state, 22-26; creates 
industrial specialists, 24, 25; 
relieves scarcity of business 
talent, 26; experience of 
United States, 28-36; statistics 
of value of, 28-36; graduate 
instruction, 32, 35; must be 
adapted to existing general 
educational system and to na- 
ture of services for which in- 
tended to train, 39-42; a se- 



86 



INDEX 



lective force, 26, 40, 58; scheme 
of extension of existing system, 
64-67; for whom desirable, 
54, 65; purpose eflBciency, not 
cidture, 66; relation to general 
education, 66, 60, 69, 73; ideal 
system of, 60-65; ciuricula of 
schools of, 68-74; and man- 
agerial ability, 76-81. 

Industrial schools, business col- 
leges, 50, 62; high schools, 50, 
62; trade schools, 51, 61; 
imiversities, 52, 63, 64; gradu- 
ate, 53, 65; relation to schools 
of general system, 66, 60, 69, 
73; scheme of system of, 60- 
65; ciuricula of, 68-74. 

Industrial services, classified, 43- 
47. 

International competition, Ger- 
man view of strength of United 
States in, 3, 4; strength of Ger- 
many in, 6-8; value of indus- 
trial education to, 6-8, 14. 

Investors, value of industrial 
education to, 24, 25. 

Japan, and industrial education. 



Labor, statistics of trained and 
non-trained, 30-36. 



Managerial ability, analyzed, 
75-81; training of, 76-80; 
psychological element, 75, 76; 
social element, 76, 77; element 
of knowledge, 79, 80. 

Services, industrial, classified, 43- 
47. 

Social problems, industrial edu- 
cation factor in solution, 22-24. 

Society, value of industrial edu- 
cation to, 22-26. 

Specialization, should not be too 
early, 72, 73. 

Technical education. See Indus- 
trial Education. 

Temperament, industrial, Ameri- 
can, 4, 6, 11; German, 7. 

United States, efficiency of re- 
sources impaired by absence of 
industrial education, 10-15; five 
causes of industrial strength, 
10, 11; causes of industrial 
weakness, 11-13; need of in- 
dustrial education, 15. 

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 
statistics of value of technical 
training, 32. 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S • A 



m 21 1907 



